Into the Deep (1994) - full transcript
An underwater exploration beneath kelp forests in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California. The film captures the birth of a shark, squids mating, a lobster molting, a fish protecting its nest from an octopus and a sea urchin, and the sea bed covered with brittle stars.
FEMALE NARRATOR: From a distance,
they look like shadows on the water.
The ones we're approaching
lie just along the California coast.
There's a forest under here,
and these are the tops of its trees.
(CAWING)
This is a forest of giant kelp,
the largest plants in the ocean,
as tall as office buildings.
On the surface,
trees this tall would need rigid trunks.
Not the giant kelp.
Tiny floats along each stem
are enough to hold it up.
It is anchored to the ocean floor
by a root-like structure called a holdfast.
No nourishment is provided
through the holdfast.
All nutrients are absorbed
directly from the water itself.
Every habitat on Earth has evolved
its own village of relationships,
its own citizens.
All sharks sink unless they swim.
This female swell shark
has settled here for a purpose.
Every few months, she lays a single egg.
Ten months later,
helped by little hooks on its back,
the baby swell shark
will struggle from its case.
This is the approach to life
his species has evolved.
They begin it alone.
This fiery little sentry
is a garibaldi.
The nest he's guarding is that dark patch
on the side of the rock.
Moray eels have powerful, crushing jaws
and sharp teeth,
but they are not a threat to the garibaldi.
The prey they lie in wait for is octopus.
The octopus has blundered
into the garibaldi's nest.
Morays stalk their victims not by sight,
but smell.
That squirt of ink contains an anesthetic
that foils the moray's sensitive nose.
Like a banner on a castle wall,
the dazzling garibaldi
posts himself on his ramparts,
a guard whose watch is never done.
He protects his nest
from hungry fish and scavengers.
Sea urchins are a constant annoyance.
It's the male garibaldi
who makes the nest,
nibbling it neatly out of a patch of algae.
He ends up with a space
about a foot and a half across.
This nest already has eggs in it,
but if the male keeps things tidy,
he may still attract another female.
When he sees her, he goes
straight to the courtship acrobatics.
Each time he does a loop, he clucks twice.
(CLUCKING)
The courtship worked.
The female is laying eggs.
From time to time
the male moves in to fertilize the eggs.
Since the female will eat the eggs
if she gets the chance,
her fierce little partner chases her away
as soon as the laying is done.
(CLUCKING)
In a couple of weeks,
a swarm of tiny garibaldi
will drift away on the current
to join the ebb and flow
of other new life in the underwater forest.
Many will be caught and consumed
by animals like this tube anemone,
a creature that snares its food
in a thicket of stinging tentacles.
Others will escape into a great living mass
of minute plants and animals
called ocean plankton.
But even there they are still food.
The pelagic jellyfish harvests them
with a paralyzing sting.
The face of an escarpment
below the kelp forest.
These corals look like plants,
but they're animals.
Their branches
comb the passing current for plankton.
Deeper lies an even stranger world,
a sort of vast shag carpet of
diminutive starfish known as brittle stars.
A sheep crab gallops clumsily
across the brittle star garden.
Is this kelp crab
about to make a meal of his captive?
No. The larger crab is a male.
He shelters and protects
the smaller female,
who is carrying a brood of eggs.
These sarcastic fringeheads,
yes, they are called sarcastic fringeheads,
have moved into adjacent empty shells.
The trouble is they're both males.
In the face of threats like these,
one will have to leave,
and his vacant shell
will be available for a female.
Night gathers.
A hungry sunstar storms through
a mass of brittle stars, who flee in panic.
When daylight fades,
creatures who shun the light of day
emerge from their lairs.
Darkness is their special cloak.
The California spiny lobster is protected
by a tough hide as hard as a rock
called an exoskeleton.
The only trouble with this suit of armor
is that it has to be thrown away
once a year for the lobster to grow.
It's called molting.
The lobster has already
leaked out enzymes.
The enzymes weaken his old shell.
Now he drinks large amounts of water
in order to put pressure on the shell.
Next, he expels the water from his body,
allowing him
to struggle out of his old shell.
It's an exhausting process.
For 10 minutes, the lobster is defenseless.
(CRACKING)
The new shell will be soft and pliable.
Before it hardens, the lobster will drink,
steadily swelling his body
until he's about a quarter of an inch bigger
than he was last year.
As the night deepens,
strangers ascend from the depths.
Tonight, and only tonight,
the opalescent squid will mate.
In a frenzy, they seize each other,
coupling again and again.
When a male succeeds,
his tentacles flush red.
Females produce egg cases
almost as long as their bodies.
With strong threads,
they anchor the cases in the sand,
covering the ocean floor
with swaying drifts of progeny.
And this is how it ends.
Every adult will die.
In the world of the kelp forest,
nothing goes to waste
and every death provides a meal to life.
Bat rays awaken to the feast.
(BARKING)
Sea lions are stuffed to the whiskers
with squid.
(BARKING CONTINUES)
What are these sea lions doing?
Your guess is as good as ours.
No one's ever witnessed this before.
Every morning they arrive
to chew these stems.
We don't know why.
Maybe this is the way
sea lions brush their teeth.
This rocky environment
was once a part of the kelp forest.
It's been transformed
into its present state by sea urchins.
It's called an urchin barrens.
Sea urchins
have a powerful appetite for kelp.
Here they are stripping the ocean bare.
Whole forests are set adrift
by these spiny little regiments.
Packed as densely
as 300 to the square yard,
the urchins
devour the giant kelp's holdfasts.
But the urchins have enemies, too,
and the sunstar is a deadly one.
There's a balance here.
The urchins eat the kelp,
the sunstar eats the urchins,
the giant kelp returns.
The endless flux
of ruin and renewal of life itself.
Like fish made of light,
a school of Spanish mackerel
hunts along the edge of the forest.
Special organs in their sides
help them weave and dart in harmony,
as if they were a single creature.
We are drawn to the ocean.
Life came from the sea,
and perhaps all life longs to return to it.
Each species follows its separate thread,
but a thread that knits its fate
into the fate of others.
None is exempt from this,
on land or in the sea.
The destiny of each is tied to all.
they look like shadows on the water.
The ones we're approaching
lie just along the California coast.
There's a forest under here,
and these are the tops of its trees.
(CAWING)
This is a forest of giant kelp,
the largest plants in the ocean,
as tall as office buildings.
On the surface,
trees this tall would need rigid trunks.
Not the giant kelp.
Tiny floats along each stem
are enough to hold it up.
It is anchored to the ocean floor
by a root-like structure called a holdfast.
No nourishment is provided
through the holdfast.
All nutrients are absorbed
directly from the water itself.
Every habitat on Earth has evolved
its own village of relationships,
its own citizens.
All sharks sink unless they swim.
This female swell shark
has settled here for a purpose.
Every few months, she lays a single egg.
Ten months later,
helped by little hooks on its back,
the baby swell shark
will struggle from its case.
This is the approach to life
his species has evolved.
They begin it alone.
This fiery little sentry
is a garibaldi.
The nest he's guarding is that dark patch
on the side of the rock.
Moray eels have powerful, crushing jaws
and sharp teeth,
but they are not a threat to the garibaldi.
The prey they lie in wait for is octopus.
The octopus has blundered
into the garibaldi's nest.
Morays stalk their victims not by sight,
but smell.
That squirt of ink contains an anesthetic
that foils the moray's sensitive nose.
Like a banner on a castle wall,
the dazzling garibaldi
posts himself on his ramparts,
a guard whose watch is never done.
He protects his nest
from hungry fish and scavengers.
Sea urchins are a constant annoyance.
It's the male garibaldi
who makes the nest,
nibbling it neatly out of a patch of algae.
He ends up with a space
about a foot and a half across.
This nest already has eggs in it,
but if the male keeps things tidy,
he may still attract another female.
When he sees her, he goes
straight to the courtship acrobatics.
Each time he does a loop, he clucks twice.
(CLUCKING)
The courtship worked.
The female is laying eggs.
From time to time
the male moves in to fertilize the eggs.
Since the female will eat the eggs
if she gets the chance,
her fierce little partner chases her away
as soon as the laying is done.
(CLUCKING)
In a couple of weeks,
a swarm of tiny garibaldi
will drift away on the current
to join the ebb and flow
of other new life in the underwater forest.
Many will be caught and consumed
by animals like this tube anemone,
a creature that snares its food
in a thicket of stinging tentacles.
Others will escape into a great living mass
of minute plants and animals
called ocean plankton.
But even there they are still food.
The pelagic jellyfish harvests them
with a paralyzing sting.
The face of an escarpment
below the kelp forest.
These corals look like plants,
but they're animals.
Their branches
comb the passing current for plankton.
Deeper lies an even stranger world,
a sort of vast shag carpet of
diminutive starfish known as brittle stars.
A sheep crab gallops clumsily
across the brittle star garden.
Is this kelp crab
about to make a meal of his captive?
No. The larger crab is a male.
He shelters and protects
the smaller female,
who is carrying a brood of eggs.
These sarcastic fringeheads,
yes, they are called sarcastic fringeheads,
have moved into adjacent empty shells.
The trouble is they're both males.
In the face of threats like these,
one will have to leave,
and his vacant shell
will be available for a female.
Night gathers.
A hungry sunstar storms through
a mass of brittle stars, who flee in panic.
When daylight fades,
creatures who shun the light of day
emerge from their lairs.
Darkness is their special cloak.
The California spiny lobster is protected
by a tough hide as hard as a rock
called an exoskeleton.
The only trouble with this suit of armor
is that it has to be thrown away
once a year for the lobster to grow.
It's called molting.
The lobster has already
leaked out enzymes.
The enzymes weaken his old shell.
Now he drinks large amounts of water
in order to put pressure on the shell.
Next, he expels the water from his body,
allowing him
to struggle out of his old shell.
It's an exhausting process.
For 10 minutes, the lobster is defenseless.
(CRACKING)
The new shell will be soft and pliable.
Before it hardens, the lobster will drink,
steadily swelling his body
until he's about a quarter of an inch bigger
than he was last year.
As the night deepens,
strangers ascend from the depths.
Tonight, and only tonight,
the opalescent squid will mate.
In a frenzy, they seize each other,
coupling again and again.
When a male succeeds,
his tentacles flush red.
Females produce egg cases
almost as long as their bodies.
With strong threads,
they anchor the cases in the sand,
covering the ocean floor
with swaying drifts of progeny.
And this is how it ends.
Every adult will die.
In the world of the kelp forest,
nothing goes to waste
and every death provides a meal to life.
Bat rays awaken to the feast.
(BARKING)
Sea lions are stuffed to the whiskers
with squid.
(BARKING CONTINUES)
What are these sea lions doing?
Your guess is as good as ours.
No one's ever witnessed this before.
Every morning they arrive
to chew these stems.
We don't know why.
Maybe this is the way
sea lions brush their teeth.
This rocky environment
was once a part of the kelp forest.
It's been transformed
into its present state by sea urchins.
It's called an urchin barrens.
Sea urchins
have a powerful appetite for kelp.
Here they are stripping the ocean bare.
Whole forests are set adrift
by these spiny little regiments.
Packed as densely
as 300 to the square yard,
the urchins
devour the giant kelp's holdfasts.
But the urchins have enemies, too,
and the sunstar is a deadly one.
There's a balance here.
The urchins eat the kelp,
the sunstar eats the urchins,
the giant kelp returns.
The endless flux
of ruin and renewal of life itself.
Like fish made of light,
a school of Spanish mackerel
hunts along the edge of the forest.
Special organs in their sides
help them weave and dart in harmony,
as if they were a single creature.
We are drawn to the ocean.
Life came from the sea,
and perhaps all life longs to return to it.
Each species follows its separate thread,
but a thread that knits its fate
into the fate of others.
None is exempt from this,
on land or in the sea.
The destiny of each is tied to all.